Name: Erica
Benchmark III, Grade Level 6, Strand - Calculations and Estimation
Teacher Mrs. Huffman, Date Feb. 26, 1999

Problem: "The Popcorn Party Problem," a Calculations & Estimation problem.

Your class is having a popcorn party. You'll need a total of 50 cups of popped corn to serve all of the guests. Your popcorn popper pops batches of 1/3 cup of kernels only. If 1/3 of a cup of unpopped kernels makes 5 1/2 cups popped corn, what is the minimum number of cups of kernels you need to pop to have enough popped corn for all the guests?

Erica's response:
What I need to do to solve this problem: The first thing I need to do is to figure out the amount that 5.5 will go into 50 so I can times it by 1/3.

How I solved this problem: I took 5.5 into 50. 9 times it would be too less of an amount. I tried 10. I got 55.0 It is a little too big of a number but it's nicer to have more than not enough.

[work shown:] 5.5 x 9 = 49.5, 5.5 x 10 = 55.0.

Then I will need to know how much 10, 1/3 cups would be, so that I could see if it can make 50.

Now I will draw work. This is a picture to show you that 1/3 cup equals 5.5 but 10 would give me the answer.

Answer: I need to pop 10, 1/3 cups of unpopped kernals to get enough popcorn for all the guests at my popcorn party.

How I Checked my work:
Erica recalculated all computations and recopied the table above.

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